2025 Instructions to Reviewers (Draft)

We want to express our thanks again for offering your time to review submissions for the conference. FemPhilAZ 2025 would not be possible without you; we really appreciate your support.

  • [New] We have faced declining submissions over the past few years. This time, we are encouraging not only submissions from graduate students in philosophy departments but also feminist philosophical work that may be more interdisciplinary, may be more historical, or may be done in a non-traditional/more creative format. We would also like to encourage more ambitious as well as more outside-the-box submissions that provoke new ways of seeing/thinking/theorizing rather than add epicycles to epicycles, even if this may mean that the argument may be a little rough or that the details are not fully worked out. We therefore request that reviewers take into account the potential of the submission’s contribution, including whether/how much it would benefit from presentation at FemPhilAZ, when this becomes a relevant factor. For reference, our CFP is here.
  • [New] Our review process this year is triple-anonymous. Only Jacob should know the identities of the authors. Please do not google the title, etc. And please let Jacob (only Jacob) know if you may have heard of a submission before.
  • [New] We want to experiment with passing on brief reviewer comments to authors, with the hope of pushing other conferences to do the same. The authors will not know who you are, we will not share the numerical scores you give, and please feel free to mark anything as “confidential to co-organizers.”
  • The authors have a maximum of 3,000 words to work with. As best you can, please try to evaluate the submission based on how well it achieves what it sets out to do given this stringent world limit.
  • We tried our best to match submissions with reviewers’ interests as much as possible, but we have a limited number of reviewers. Even if you don’t feel you are an expert on the issues a paper engages with, we ask that you give your best shot. But if you feel like you really can’t review a paper, please let Jacob know as soon as possible.
  • We will follow our past practice of giving reviewers the first bid on being commentators.

Please include the following in your review:

  1. A numerical score reflecting your judgment of the quality of the submission, using the scale below. Please feel free to use half-points if helpful. The numerical scores will never be shared with the authors.
    • 5 for submissions that in your judgment should definitely be invited for presentation.
    • 4 for submissions that you think should be invited, but about which you have some reservation. Please specify your reservation.
    • 3 for submissions that you consider to have important flaws. Please specify the flaws.
    • 2 for submissions that you think should not be invited for presentation.
    • 1 for submissions that do not meet the minimum standards for this kind of conference.
  2. Please provide a brief comment on the submission. No summary is necessary. A few sentences/short paragraph is fine, though we, of course, welcome more detailed feedback. If there is any part of your comment that you do not wish to be passed on to the authors, please distinguish that in some clear way as “confidential to co-organizers.”
  3. Would you want to serve as the commentator if this submission were accepted?

Again, thank you so much for helping us out!

–Ding, Jacob, and Kyle